How Do You Drive a Fire Engine on Icy Roads?

This is a long video but... after watching all these cars and a bus drive totally out of control, along comes a responding Seattle Fire Department Type 1 Engine. No sliding, no out of control driving... what gives? Not having a lick of experience driving in snow and ice, I have to ask, is it the weight of the engine, chains?

How on earth can you respond to an incident when the roads are this icy?

Note: Video for this post is embedded below.

CBz

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Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on December 2, 2010 at 7:44pm

I knew that Mike, I was just razzing Lutan.

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Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on December 2, 2010 at 7:49pm

I stand corrected Sir.

If you'll be driving through the Chicago are, feel free to drop me a line. Maybe we can grab a beer and swap some "war" stories.

Stay safe!

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Permalink Reply by Doug on December 2, 2010 at 8:06pm

Ah, yes, the Lake Erie Snow Machine!

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Permalink Reply by Doug on December 2, 2010 at 8:07pm

Those spot chains are bad-ass, for lack of a better term. We have them on all of our apparatus as well.

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Wayne Arquette Sr. on December 3, 2010 at 10:25am

they need to have drivers .drive a smooth bore tanker and they would have a lot more respect for something that big, and do it on ice is a real treat.

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Permalink Reply by Emily Barbeau on December 15, 2010 at 9:45am

Regardless the size of the vehicle, it is always a challenge to drive in the snow and ice. This is why more experience should be needed. Calls will happen in ANY sort of weather so all firefighters should be prepared for whatever comes along. That said, maybe people should look more into what we could do for the trucks themselves to make it easier.